While the Coloretta Viva script copies pixel colors, transferring codes to Windows Paint gets awkward. This AutoHotkey data filling technique for multiple fields works in any Windows program. Plus, we look at another method for popping up user messages.

How to Find the Free AutoHotkey Tricks Book on Apple iBooks

Even though you can now get AutoHotkey Tricks You Ought To Do With Windows (Fourth Edition) free on Amazon.com, you can’t get it free in the United Kingdom or other non-US Amazon sites—at least not yet. Of course, you can always download it directly from our free page no matter where you live. However, alternatives are now available—in particular Apple iBooks. The following links direct you to Apple pages which offer AutoHotkey Tricks free in various parts of the world:

Okay…I’m not a poet. My mind doesn’t work that way. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see how AutoHotkey might be useful to people who craft the English (or any other) language. Even so, I occasionally enjoy writing a short rhyming couplet. (I know…constructing rhyming poems has become cliché—at least for real poets.)

In this blog, I offer a couple of AutoHotkey scripts for assisting and inspiring(?) budding wordsmiths. The first includes a set of over 500 Hotstrings for inserting “the most beautiful words in the English language.” The second script draws upon the Web to create a pop-up menu of rhymes. Even if you never intend to write a poem, you might find these AutoHotkey techniques interesting and/or useful. Continue reading →

While Preplanning Script Writing Can Be Useful, Don’t Take It Too Seriously—Sometimes It Only Makes Sense to Rewrite Everything

The AutoHotkey script writing process rarely runs in a straight line. Often I start with a vague concept of what I want to do then start fiddling with the tools. Unlike when building a toolshed or bookcase, I rarely begin with a complete plan or blueprint for an AutoHotkey script. In fact, the code may undergo numerous changes during the debugging and problem-solving phases.

For anyone who builds things, this approach may be disconcerting. Afterall, you can’t afford to build a house by trial-and-error. The cost of wasted materials would be prohibitive. Traditionally, we spend a great deal of time in the planning phase to make sure we avoid expensive mistakes. Even in computer programming, large projects come together much better after extensive planning. But with smaller projects such as AutoHotkey scripts the opposite may be true. I often start a script with only a vague idea of what I want to do. As I work on it, the possibilities expand and I often change course. Continue reading →

Sometimes It’s Quicker and Easier to Use Ryan RegEx Tester Rather Than Writing an AutoHotkey Script

I used Ryan’s RegEx Tester in an earlier blog to create Web links without writing an AutoHotkey script. This time I take advantage of this powerful tool by using it to extract data for insertion into the INI file discussed in the last blog on this topic. The fact that you can paste any text into the top of the RegEx Tester, add a Regular Expression (and a substitution expression for RegExPlace()), then extract the altered text from the bottom pane makes it a unique AutoHotkey app. This capability alone can motivate someone to learn how to write Regular Expressions.

The Wrong Capitalization of Letters in URLs Can Cause Page Access Failure—A Trick for Using an INI File to Solve Case Problems in AutoHotkey

In an effort to take advantage of the hidden index built into the AutoHotkey.com site, I’ve started writing a script I call AutoHotkeyQuickReg.ahk which parses the downloaded pages. The first step involved those searches which downloaded a command page.

AutoHotkey Library Deal

The original version of the AutoHotkey Quick Reference script pops up a MsgBox which displays the syntax of the command, then offers the option to open the Web page in the default browser. Recently, I added a new feature which parses and displays information about the built-in AutoHotkey variables whenever detecting the “Variables and Expressions” page. However, I had to find a way to deal with the problem of letter case (capitalization) sensitivity. Get it wrong and either the Web page doesn’t come up or the right data won’t load. Continue reading →

The RegExReplace() Function Makes It Easy to Extract and Cleanup Text, Plus a Quick-and-Dirty RegEx to Strip All HTML Tags

Last time, we accessed commands at AutoHotkey.com using its hidden built-in index. Whenever the script downloaded a command page, we identified it by the embedded HTML code <pre class=”Syntax”>. Not only do the <pre class=”Syntax”>…</pre> tags identify the command pages but they surround the proper syntax for that command. Since this easily located HTML format appears in every command page, it can be used to launch a quick reference pop-up window. We only need to parse the command syntax with the RegExMatch() function, then clean up any extraneous HTML tags. Continue reading →